NT abuse hearing to be held in September

A Baptist home in the Northern Territory where mixed-race and Aboriginal children were sexually assaulted over three decades will be the focus of the next hearing to be held by the national inquiry into child abuse in institutions.

The hearing scheduled for Darwin on Monday, September 22 will hear from men and women who were sexually abused as children at the Retta Dixon Home between 1946 - 1980.

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse will also examine how the evangelical Baptist organisation, the NT and commonwealth governments responded to allegations of abuse against workers who were employed at the home.

The home was run by Aborigines Inland Mission (AIM) which was founded in 1905 by a Baptist Missionary, Retta Long (nee Dixon).

It began work in the Northern Territory in the 1930s and ran the Retta Dixon Home at Bagot Reserve.

In 1998 the organisation changed its name to the Australian Indigenous Ministries.

The hearing, which is expected to run for two weeks will look at the response of the NT's police force and the Director of Public Prosecutions in 1975 and 2002 to allegations raised by residents of the Retta Dixon Home against Donald Henderson, who was a house parent at the home from 1964 - 1975.